Traveling Beyond Her Sphere by Bess Beatty

Author:Bess Beatty [Beatty, Bess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Women, Social History, United States, 19th Century, 20th Century, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9781955835343
Google: lsc8EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: New Acdemia+ORM
Published: 2016-09-08T00:22:01+00:00

The Coliseum in 1875. Library of Congress

Guidebooks were not as essential for making sense of the largely intact Coliseum.223 This iconic symbol of Rome’s ancient glory and decadence, built in the first century as an arena for gladiatorial games, had, by the nineteenth century, survived an earthquake, the ravages of scavengers and even aborted plans to turn it into a wool factory employing prostitutes or a bullfighting arena. “Of all the ruins in Rome,” a visitor declared in the 1860s, “none is at once so beautiful, so imposing, and so characteristic as the Colosseum.”224 Anne Bense enthused over “the noble old Coloseum [sic]” which “impresses one more and more as it rises from the mists of the centuries into the vision of the present.”225 Appreciation of this most famous symbol of ancient Rome was often mingled with sad reflection on the legend that Christians were martyred there. Nina Halsey joined others delighted to see “the grand old Coliseum,” but was also aggrieved to confront the place “where thousands of Christians were [torn?] by wild beasts for the amusement of the Emporers [sic] of Rome.”226 Lucy Dudley could find no redeeming quality at all in the venerable arena which “stands alone, different and useless except in its lessons of power and martyrdom.”227

Constance Harrison, as eclectic in her response to Rome as she had been to Paris, thought the Baths of Caracalla, ruins from the third century CE where Shelley penned Prometheus Unbound, more impressive than either the Roman Forum or the Coliseum.228 Marion Burgess claimed the Pantheon, a Roman temple that was saved from destruction by consecration as a Christian church in the seventh century, as “the most splendid monument of antiquity in Rome.”229 Until 1883 visitors saw it topped off with “asses ears,” the local nickname for the two belfries Bernini added in the sixteenth century in a misguided effort to improve the magnificent ancient building. When Mary Elizabeth Gittings visited two years after the eyesores were removed, it was the “big eye at the top,” the oculus that allows in light (and rain as well) that caught her attention; she also singled out the “grand old equestrian statue” of Marcus Aurelius in front of the Campidoglio, which dates back to the second century and is the only equestrian statue from the Roman Empire to survive.230 On the day she visited the Pantheon in 1900, Willie Adams could only admire its exterior because “thousands of dirty people” were crowded inside to view the body of King Umberto I, lying in state after he was assassinated by an anarchist.231

Ancient ruins held little attraction for Eleanor Middleton, unusual in her preference for the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica.232 Others were more ambivalent about these legacies of Roman Catholic power and genius. The overlay of Catholicism, which sometimes co-existed with ancient ruins but could overwhelm them, nearly ruined Rome for Kate Jones who arrived mid-century assuming “it would be “that ‘mecca’ of our fondest anticipation.” A few days in Rome, however, served “to sicken & disgust me with the place.

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